A Confused streaming system - Mutec / SOtM Ultra

[yabaVR]

gui - I do have a laptop, one that actually has very little installed on it, so something I could try.  In addition, you can run the sMS-200 without a PC, by plugging a USB drive with music in the back.  That said, I do not think jitter from my PC is the issue here.  For sure, the PC is probably not the best source and it may well have relatively high levels of jitter.  But the PC’s job is to send 1’s and 0’s to the sMS-200Ultra via Ethernet. This is sent as packet data to via a switch, as it happens this is an SOtM modified switch that is fed from the REF10 via SOtM’s clock board, the sMS-200 buffers the incoming 1’s and 0’s and itself is running from the REF 10, the tX-USBulta buffers and reclocks, with clock reference from the REF10, this feeds a Mutec MC3+USB, which strips out the clock from feed, reclocks and sends out via AES3, the MC3 has the REF10 as it’s reference clock.  If any jitter from the PC could make it through that lot I would be very surprised indeed.  Consider that this hardware string has about 3 seconds of latency due to buffering.  Indeed, when kit swapping I noticed that you can pull the Ethernet cable out of the sMS-200 and the system keeps playing for a few seconds with no obvious tonal change.   Also consider that with decent recordings the treble sound pristine to me.  Jitter is not the answer to everything.

I'm totally with you by what you tell me about the signal chain. But that's the chain after the USB-port of your PC/laptop.
Jitter that's induced into the signal before it leaves the USB-controller (or ethernet controller) stays in the signal and is more clearly noticeble when not covert with lots of new jitter (thanx to SOtM).

For the laptop. It's not only about the software that's installed but about every task/process activ in the background.
Actually you can hear every step of sound improvement when killing processes not needed for audio (e.g. plug&play, messenger service, desktop shell...and on) with the taskmanager one by one.
I know most of the forum members won't believe it and I'm ok with this because they don't have the experience to have listened to a system minimalized by e.g. Audiophile Optimizer, Fidelizer and others. I can tell from my experience that the magic of music is right there.
The less jitter you can start with at your source and the less you add down the chain (SOtM) the more involving, natural and real your music gets and then eventually it's becoming magic. 

gui